no THE GARDEN OF A 



about my duty to you, quite forgetting that in her 

 wrath two years ago she summed you up as ' one of 

 those foreign adventurers.' Yet I suppose I must 

 go in," I said dubiously. 



But I didn't go. Evan said it would be undutiful 

 to him. 



I wonder if she and the Reverend Jabez ever sit 

 in the same chair in front of the fire ! Evan says 

 they probably have an oil stove, and of course no 

 one would care to sit by that ! 



The day began for me at half past six o'clock. 

 Not that I got up then. I merely roused suffi- 

 ciently to go over to the window-seat and see if 

 the weather promised well. 



It has been an opalescent day. When I looked 

 out this morning, the opal was dull with barely a 

 flush; everything was a mysterious pearly gray. 

 Season, location, time, equally veiled by the fog 

 that remained to tell of yesterday's downpour. One 

 thing, however, this fog surely indicated, that the 

 weather was still mild, as a cold northwest wind 

 would have swept the world dry, while the first 

 thing that the window revealed would have been 

 the top of the bare gray maples that bound us on 



